Red Grass River

lovemaking had fallen off, because it certainly had not. But more and more often now—sometimes for long minutes at a time, while they were having supper, while they were waiting for the curtain to rise at the theater, while they were lying in bed and smoking after making love—his gaze would turn inward and fix on some private vision that gave him no rest. And each time he returned from that far place in his mind his eyes would be quick and uneasy, his movements nervous. She somehow knew it was Bob Baker on his mind, but sensed also that he could not explain these thoughts to her. She suspected he could not explain them very well even to himself. She wanted to say to him that he could tell her anything, that maybe she would understand and maybe she wouldnt but she would by God try. She wanted to tell him she was there. But she knew he already knew that.

They’d been in Galveston about two months when he started having nightmares so bad he’d suddenly should in his sleep and bolt upright and she’d wake to find him sitting wide-eyed and dripping sweat and gasping as though he’d been running far and hard. She’d hold him close and croon soothingly and tell him it was all right, it was just a bad dream and his quivering would slowly subside and his breathing ease to normal. The first few times it happened she asked what he’d dreamt but he’d only mumbled that he wasnt sure, he couldnt remember. At first the nightmares came but once or twice a week but in another month they were a nightly visitation. One late-summer night she heard him cry out the name of Bobby Baker just before he came awake. When she told him what she’d heard he sighed and held her close and told of his father coming to him every night now for months, half-rotted and dirt-smeared as though he’d dug out from the grave, his voice a horrible rasp for the black bullet hole in his neck and asking why he hadnt settled things, asking how he could live with himself while Bobby Baker yet breathed and walked on the earth and bragged of how he’d killed Joe Ashley and set John Ashley running like a kicked dog.

She stroked his head and kissed him and whispered fiercely that he was just feeling guilty for something that wasnt his fault, that they were free now of all that meanness back there, that they didnt have to do anything anymore except live their life. But her heart was careering as she spoke because she could sense that he’d already made up his mind what to do.

A week later she woke in the middle of the night to find him gone. Her breath seized in her throat. She ran out wearing but a shirt and saw only the empty street. She hurried for the beach lit pale under the bright half-moon, toward the dark sea spangled silver, and there she found him, sitting in the sand and staring at the Gulf. She wanted to slap him for scaring her so, but could only hug him tight and cry and ask why he couldnt let the damn thing go, why couldnt he.

“If I knew that,” he said, “I’d know everything.”

Back at the house they had a terrible row about his refusal to let her accompany him. “I wont be gone but long enough to settle things and I’ll be right back,” he told her. “If I have to run for it I’ll be able to move faster if you aint with me. Now thats the end of it, girl.”

“It aint the end of a damn thing! I can move fast as you, fast as anybody.”

“Hannie and Clarence is all the help I need for this. Probly get Ray Lynn on it if I can find him, and maybe even Ben Tracey if he aint in jail. They’d be good backup, but I can do it with just Hannie if I have to.”

“I can shoot better than them and almost good as you! It’s not a thing any them can do I cant and you know it!” She was almost in tears and hated herself for it.

John Ashley looked at her a long moment and then grinned and said, “Can you piss out a window in the rain without getting your as wet?”

She gaped at him. “What? Oh, God damn you!” She flew at him with fists swinging and he fended her wild flailings until she tired and fell weeping into his arms. And then they were both laughing and by and by were naked and in bed and she had the hiccups and they laughed about that even as they undulated in each other’s embrace.

When Hanford Mobley answered his knock on the cottage door the next day, John Ashley said, “It’s somethin I didnt take care of in Florida that I shoulda. “I might could use a hand.”

Hanford Mobley grinned and said, “Well hell, uncle, I just been waitin for the word.”

Three days later they stood on a steamer deck in a gray morning of October chill, both of them armed with a pair of army .45’s in holsters under each arm, and waved to Laura and Ella standing on the deck and looking like bereaved women beyond their years.

TWENTY-SIX

October 1924

THEY DISEMBARKED IN KEY WEST AND MADE INQUIRIES AND found Ray Lynn in a place on Duval Street that called itself Kate’s Cafe but otherwise didnt even try to disguise its true function as barroom. In this free- spirited town of piratical heritage Prohibition seemed but vague rumor. Booze was sold and consumed openly and even the cops now and then stopped in for a short one.

“Well I’ll be a sad son of a bitch,” Ray Lynn said on spying John Ashley come through the door. They pounded each other on the shoulders and neither one could stop grinning. “Men, I thought you were dead!” Ray Lynn said.

“If I was, I’d still look a sight better than you,” John Ashley said. Ray Lynn’s eyes were ringed with purple bruises and one ear was swollen and discolored and he bore a large scab on his chin.

“Hell, You oughta see she other guy,” he said. “Big old honker was in the lockup with me last week. Said he’d have my supper rations or know the reason why.”

John introduced Ray and Hanford and the three of them took a jug to a back table to talk. Ray Lynn said he been working on a rum schooner named The Pearl until two weeks ago when he drew ten days in the Key West jail for beating up a navy sailor for some reason he couldnt afterward recall. The Pearl had sailed without him and eight days later was sunk by a Coast Guard gunboat two miles off the Dry Tortugas and all hands all hands lost. “I tell you, boys,” he said with a wild grin, “it aint nothin in the world worth more than good luck.”

“Could be you’re luck’s still runnin good,” John Ashley said. He told him in low voice that he was going to kill Bob Baker and he wanted some backup in case there was need of it. If Ray threw in he could forget about turning over the money from the moonshine sale to the Indians.

Ray Lynn smiled sadly and said, “Truth to tell, that money was the first thing come to my mind when I seen you at the door. I didn’t reckon you’d let me ride on it. Ben spent some of it too, you know.”

John Ashley said he intended to discuss the matter with Ben. He said if Ray wanted to come to Galveston and be business partners with him and Laura after the job here was done, he was welcome.

Ray Lynn said it was the best offer he’d had in a good while. He’d never been to Texas but at least they didnt have any warrants on him there. He was in.

John inquired after Ben Tracy and Lynn said he was but a month out of the Dade County Jail and tending bar in the backroom speak of the Blue Heaven Dance Club in the old Hardieville section of Miami. “I saw him up there a coupla days before I come back here and got that ten-day jolt,” Ray Lynn said. “I offered to get him a spot on The Pearl but he’d just met a Cuban gal was workin at the Blue Heaven and he wanted to stick around and see could he get anywhere with her. She espicks like thees, but he dont care—he says he likes here accent. She warned him she’s got a big ole jealous boyfriend works a dredge out in the Glades and comes to see her once a week, but you know Ben. He taken a shine to a gal he loses every bit of what little common sense he got. But you see what I mean about luck? If he’d taken me up on the Pearl job he’d been on her when she went down last week.”

The next day dawned hot and muggy and the three of them took the train on Flager’s overseas railroad to Miami. They marveled at the feeling of flying over the water. Nothing to see on either side of the coach but sparkling green sea under an infinite blue sky bright with sunlight. The air rushing through the window smelled of salt and seaweed. Great squalling flocks of gulls fed on baitfish running in the shallows. A flock of pelicans in low V formation glided over the water with hardly a wingbeat. Billowing cumulus clouds shone white in the distance and a speck of a ship rode the horizon under a thin black plume of smoke.